Saturday, June 11, 2011

There's Something in Our House -- Part One

Author’s note: This is the first of a two-part story about something wicked that inhabits a Liberty, Mo., home.

The 2000s looked promising for Kim and Mike Smithmeyer. Steady jobs at the Ford Motor Company’s Claycomo, Mo., plant, construction of a new house in Liberty, Mo., and the birth of identical twins, Dan and Randy; all by 2003. In 2006 Kim took a buyout from Ford to stay at home with the boys and go back to school.

Then things changed. Something dark came into their lives.

“The first thing was in 2006,” Kim said. “Dan was three. I was just holding him and he was looking at the stairs and said, ‘Mommy, who are the people coming down the stairs?’”

Kim looked, but the stairs were empty.

“Honey, I don’t see them,” she said. “Could you describe them?"

Dan ignored his mother, intently looking at the stairs, moving his head as if he was following something.

“Then he said they were gone,” Kim said.

Although she dismissed this incident as a three-year-old’s imagination, she soon discovered it wasn’t.

“A couple of months later, it was late at night, my family was sleeping and I was going to do laundry,” she said.

She reached toward the laundry room door and the door handle moved.

“I went to grab the laundry room door and the door just literally, like you were opening the door handle, it moved on its own.”

Kim stood before the door, not believing what she’d seen, put the laundry basket on the floor, walked to her bedroom and went to sleep, leaving the dirty laundry until tomorrow.

“I know what I saw and I know I heard it, but I tried to explain it away,” she said. “I just kept trying to dismiss it. I just could not come up with an explanation. I thought I did not see that. I told my husband, and he said, ‘yeah, no.’”

Then things escalated.

“We started hearing the sounds of footsteps above us,” Kim said. “Then it would sound like when our kids would run down the stairs and we’d look, and there would be nothing. The kids would be asleep.”

Kim was asleep one night when something in the house got personal.

“One time I was taking a nap on the couch and I woke up and to what I thought was my husband coming home from work,” she said. “I laid there because I just wanted to sleep. He tucked me in. I felt the tuck in. I (went back to sleep and) woke up 20 minutes later and it was not near the time for him to come home.”

Kim called Mike at work.

“I said, ‘did you come home?’ He said, ‘no.’”

Mike has downplayed the occurrences in the home, Kim said, although they’ve all experienced electrical problems, like a television changing volumes and lights turning on and off.

But his opinion changed with the banging.

“The last four months has been the worst,” Kim said. “Things have kind of changed.”

Kim came home one day in April to find her husband had taken the children to a pizza restaurant.

“I was so excited I was home alone,” she said. “I had taken my clothes off and was going to the bathroom.”

She found she wasn’t alone.

“My bedroom door slammed so hard that I have some knickknacky stuff on top of our armoire and everything shook,” she said. “I thought someone had broken into my house.”

She called Mike to see if he’d come home, but he and the boys were still at the restaurant.

“Someone is in the house and I’m naked,” she told him.

Mike said he would call 911, but Kim had second thoughts.

“I looked out the door and nothing was there, so I locked the door,” she said. She took a rifle out of the closet – a rifle with no ammunition, hoping the cocking noise would scare an intruder.

“I went out and everything was secure. There was nothing in my house – human,” she said. “All my doors were locked, nothing had been disturbed and my cats were sleeping.”

She ran back to the bedroom, locked the door and waited for her husband to come home.

“That’s the first thing that’s been scary to me,” she said.

It wasn’t the last.

Next week: Something talks to the children.

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.

1 comment:

I think many people forget that everything we can perceive literally has an opposite. This goes all the way down to the subatomic particles and energy itself. Therefore some other form of awareness may see one's very existence, indeed this world itself, as a negative to itself and proceed to try to eradicate usFor lack of a b etter term these "entities", definitely want to do harm to the family. But . I don't think human perceptions of good and evil apply here.Suppose they see our very existence, as a blight which must be removed and they have found a method to access our reality.

Sensitive and open-minded people may be more susceptible to their influences simply because they are aware of other ways of perceiving. This could start a cascade effect if these entities realize that there is an open door. They may begin to cluster and literally build their force. This could explain why paranormal occurrences sometimes follow people from house to house or across continents.

Perhaps one way to combat these entities would be to train one's mind in various spiritual or mental disciplines. In that way, close the door so that these entities no longer have access. Groups of people that come together to combine their energy, and quite literally "push back", a War of the Worlds on an energy level. It is also quite possible that we have affected the entities existence and domain. Negatively or positively I do not know. We could be their "bump in the night"".

The human race has a lot to learn. We are still very young. Let us hope we can live long enough to grow up. Personally, I think they can. But it is going to take mature, open minded flexible minds.

About Me

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author, college journalism instructor, and fan of all things strange. His books about the paranormal, "Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters," "What Lurks Beyond: The Paranormal In Your Backyard," "Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us," and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri's Most Spirited Spots,” are available at www.amazon.com.
Jason is available for interviews, speaking engagements and beer festivals. E-mail all serious inquiries to: shadowpeoplebook@gmail.com.